


The Dangers of Tea

by PurpleFluffyCat



Series: Horace and Lily, in Three Acts [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, F/M, Manipulation, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-04
Updated: 2016-01-04
Packaged: 2018-05-11 19:50:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5639809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PurpleFluffyCat/pseuds/PurpleFluffyCat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lamenting his recent loss of Lily, Horace reluctantly attends Dolores Umbridge's party. He is, however, ill-prepared for exactly what may await him there...</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Dangers of Tea

**Author's Note:**

> This story is intended as a sequel to 'Something Old, Something New', although will likely also make sense alone.

In the days following Lily's wedding, Horace was feeling much worse than he had expected. He hadn't left his palatial London house for over a week, had failed to return the Floo calls of his friends and even - to the House Elves' great shock and concern - was rather off his food. He was more melancholy than he had been for decades; life without Lily was black indeed.

Every little detail seemed to conspire to remind him of all that he had lost - her laugh, her favourite food, her particular way of calling him names without really meaning it - so Horace had found it difficult to actually _do_ anything at all. Instead, he sat for hours at his mahogany desk and stared blankly out of the window, sorely lamenting everything that had gone from him, all that he had failed to do while the same self-recriminating conversation circled endlessly in his mind:

He had done the _right thing_ , hadn't he? Let her go and marry someone suitable; someone young. His Gryffindor friends had often told him that doing the sodding, damnable _right thing_ was supposed to give one a sense of happy self-assurance. Horace, however, felt nothing but empty and broken.

_We could have made it work._

Her lovely, strident voice rang in his ears, mocking him for his inaction, his cowardice. He should have seized life - and Lily - with both hands, and to hell with the consequences. Yet some foolish, old-fashioned part of him had said no, it wasn't proper. As ever: do nothing, lie low, run away, don't dare go after what you want...

_We could have made it work._

 

********

And so it went on. No Floo calls, no articles finished, no gilded boxes of crystallized pineapple. Just going stiff in his studded chair as he pretended to write and his mind wandered to missed opportunities and tortured self-recriminations.

One afternoon however, Horace was roused by what looked like the shadow of an owl flit across the window - a suspicion which was then confirmed by the tap of a small, sharp beak against the glass. With a sigh, he stood and undid the latch to allow the bird inside. These flutters of wings provided a small a distraction, at least, thought Horace, even as a small part of his heart leapt at the foolish possibility that the letter might be from Lily.

A glance at the envelope however - pink, scalloped edges, sickly-sweet scent - revealed no such luck. The irony was not lost on him that this particular missive was in fact from his _least_ favourite - yet surprisingly most tenacious - ex-pupil.

With a sigh, Horace opened the envelope and read.

 

> Dear Professor Slughorn,
> 
> I hope you don't mind me calling you 'Professor' still; it was after all nearly fifteen years ago that I ceased being your pupil, but I treasure memories of those times very close to my bosom. Similarly, the Ministry functions that we have both attended are ever so clear in my memory and I do always look forward to the occasions on which I might see you again.

 

Horace snorted as he read that. A girl so lacking in competence and charm had done well even to snare a filing job in the Ministry and she was only present at official functions to pour the tea. Not that she was _bad_ exactly. Just tedious. And rather ugly. Quite unlike most of his dear Slytherins...

 

> That, in fact brings me on to the point of this letter. I have recently been promoted to a secretarial post with the office of the Minister himself, and am having a party to celebrate! Lots of my new colleagues will be there, and even Mr. Fudge says he might find the time to come along. I would be delighted if you could make it: 11A Wisteria Avenue, Highgate, on the fifteenth of June, 7:30pm.
> 
> I very much hope to see you again soon, my dear Professor.
> 
> Fondly,
> 
> Dolores Jane Umbridge

 

Horace's immediate reaction - as it had been for all of the previous weeks' self-inflicted incarceration - was that he was in no mood for seeing anybody. However, he forced himself to think through the matter before casting the letter to one side or replying with a prior engagement. He _was_ beginning to feel a little suffocated indoors, it was true, and judging by the daily weeping fits of his kitchen elf and the unaccustomed looseness of his trousers, perhaps he really hadn't been taking care of himself of late.

Life had to go on whether he liked it or not, and Horace reasoned that a party might be just the thing to get him back into the swing of affairs. Back onto the Thestral after a fall, and all that. And the Minister's office, eh? Fudge himself, newly appointed and tipped to be a pretty good incumbent, might be there. It probably made good sense to go; likely to meet a couple of interesting people - and he did want to know how that young lad Diggle was getting on these days. Perhaps a soirée might be a welcome distraction after all, no matter how uninspiring it's host.

Therefore Horace took up his quill and wrote an acceptance note to the peculiar little witch, sending off his beautiful whiskered owl to Highgate within the hour.

 

*******

The end of the week - and thus the fifteenth of June - arrived with surprising speed. At a quarter-past-eight that evening, a finely dressed, yet still rather glum Horace Slughorn apparated to a manicured patch of grass in front of a low-rise block of bijou apartments and climbed the cast-iron staircase to reach number 11A. He prided himself on always being fashionably late for these functions; far better for the event to get underway and for the important people to arrive before he made his entrance.

It was indeed the first time Horace had left the house since that ill-fated wedding day, nearly three weeks before. The warm summer air played across his cheeks, reminding him of Lily's hair, like gossamer against his skin; her eyes, the colour of verdant glades and asphodel leaves as they kissed in his workroom, the bubbling cauldron quite forgotten...

Horace tried to quieten his thoughts then pressed the kitten-shaped doorbell adjacent to the pastel-pink front door, listening with stifled horror as a charm-synthesized snippet of Celestina Warbeck rang inside. There was then the sound of scuffling, a little heavy breathing mixed with the grate of a zipper, and the door was thrown open to reveal a short and quite frankly rather unattractive witch wearing an extraordinary dress, mousy-hair charmed into tight ringlets and an expression that Horace guessed was supposed to be a wide smile. The contrast with Lily's effortless grace and sparkling expression was so great, Horace didn't even try to stop himself from drawing the comparison.

"Professor Slughorn, how lovely of you to have come to my little party!" cooed Dolores Umbridge, "It really is an honour."

"Oh, not at all, not at all," Horace dissembled, trying to focus upon the matter in hand, "Congratulations and all on the new post, um.... Dolores. I am looking forward to having a chat with Cornelius this evening - we haven't had the chance to catch up in a long while and there are a couple of things I think I need to run by him. He's arrived already, I trust?"

Dolores shifted slightly nervously as he spoke, but then moved aside from the doorway without answering his question. "Please do come in," she said, then led Horace through a narrow and chintz-laden hallway into a prissily-decorated flat, containing -

\- No one at all.

The emptiness was something of a shock. "Oho! Where are all your guests then?"

"It seems they couldn't make it after all," Dolores said girlishly, "But I daresay we can have an enjoyable evening all the same, Professor, just you and I..." Another enormous grimace-like grin came his way, and a twitch of the facial muscles that might have supposed to have been fluttering eyelashes.

 _Oh no._ This was the very last thing that Horace had hoped for - an evening stuck with a dull and charmless woman he wished he had never had in his House. However, always the gentleman, he replied, "Ah, very good then. Where shall I sit?"

Dolores made a little jump that looked distinctly like a private cheer, then motioned toward an unlikely-looking piece of frilly furniture in the corner of her flat. "Just here, Professor. And I'll sit..." She maneuvered herself onto the sofa so close to Horace she was almost upon his lap, "Just here."

That arrangement left Horace with very little room to move and seemingly very little air to breathe as Dolores' sickly perfume filled his nostrils. Her large buttocks pressed against him on the sofa and she seemed to be trying to lean even closer as each second went by. Assuming he wasn't going to be rude, he was squarely trapped.

Given his own generous dimensions, Horace would be the very last person to judge someone badly for being on the plump side, but there was something about Dolores Umbridge that struck him as particularly unattractive, even for a woman of such relative youth. She had put on a lot of weight since he had last seen her, that was for sure, but not in an admirable womanly way like the luscious Molly Prewett or the goddess-like Pomona Sprout... _or the gorgeous little succulent curves of Lily's tummy that were so sensitive when he nibbled her there..._

No, Dolores' fat had gathered all in charmless rolls on her stomach and her face was disappearing among flabby jowls. That evening's choice of outfit did nothing to enhance the picture either. Even slender women were usually shy of backless evening dresses with a cleavage that plunged to the navel, but on Dolores Umbridge, this particular pink, sequined example left far, _far_ too little to the imagination. Horace was reminded of a grotesquely overgrown baby-doll, or perhaps a technicolour bull-frog.

In stark contrast, the full image of Lily naked then flashed tauntingly before his eyes - _pert, round breasts, slim waist, gently swelling hips, the way she gasped at his caresses and arched into his touch... Oh God._ Horace so wanted to run away and lick his wounds. And Lily's-

"-Hem hem." Horace was brought suddenly back to the present. "I said, Professor, would you like a drink?"

"Oh, yes please - splendid. Thank you," Horace said hastily, then accepted the proffered glass of wine, very glad that the woman was too talentless to be a Legilimens. "So tell me, err... Dolores, how are you finding your new work?"

"Most illuminating, Professor, most illuminating!" she gushed, "It really is so interesting to be working in the Minister's office. And Mr. Fudge once said that I might be promoted in time, if I keep on top of my work, manage to displace some colleagues..." She trailed off somewhat eerily, leaving Horace to wonder exactly what sort of 'colleague-displacement' she had in mind. "...But yes, it really is a super position. How are your positions at present, Professor?"

_Her smooth, pale thighs under his hands; the way she bucked upwards to feel his fat fingers inside her, always demanding more... Laying on his back, desperate, as Lily fearsomely rode atop him... Barely managing to stay upright as a silky red head bobbed at his groin, overwhelmed with delicious heat..._

"My positions? Um... yes," He stuttered, feeling himself flush. "The International Potions Journal had an editorial board meeting last month - all seemed to go pretty well. And Hogwarts is of course the same as ever. New crop arriving in the autumn."

"Ah yes, Hogwarts!" Dolores chimed. "I do _so_ miss being in your classes, Professor. You were such a good teacher! I do remember that I always wanted extra lessons with you on my own - after dark - but you were kind enough to say that they weren't necessary, what with my level of talent at Potions..."

"Yes, quite so," he replied absently, glad that he had managed to be so tactful in the past. _Oh, but Lily was so quick, so clever... she got through the Potions syllabus in half the time of the others and then moved onto work that he specially devised for her. And she would stay to chat after class - always coming up with some interesting new idea, always asking whether he'd had a nice weekend, forever joking and smiling..._

"The thing is, I remember everything about you from school," Dolores continued, dropping her voice to a sultry drawl. "Every night I remember you, when I'm on my own, missing you, remembering what it was like to have such a clever, strong teacher..."

"Shucks, no need to overdo it," said Horace, trying to be jovial but starting to feel distinctly uncomfortable by the increasing fervour of the woman's tone.

"But no, I mean it!" she cried triumphantly. In a sudden movement, Dolores then slipped from the sofa to kneel at his feet on the shag-pile rug. "Please have me, Professor!” she wailed, “I've loved you for so long! Ever since I was a fifth year I admired my wonderful Head of House, and I've tried writing to you over and over again ever since, and I know that now I've got a proper job it'll all be ok and we can live together, and have babies, and-"

"-Hang on a moment, there!" spluttered Horace, utterly taken aback.

Dolores' face was a picture of desperate hope. "But you do want me... don't you? You always answer my letters so politely. I knew it would only be a matter of time before we became a couple. That is true, isn't it, Professor? Isn't it?"

Horace had needed to deal with many things during his time as a Hogwarts Professor, but until that point, unsolicited and delusional declarations of love had not been one of them. He therefore found himself without a well-turned response at the ready, and managed merely to croak, "Errr...no. I'm afraid, no it isn't."

"What?" She barely managed to speak the word, wide eyed and aghast at his lack of sense.

"Well, sorry and all," Horace flanneled, "But I have to say I don't see that quite working. The you-and-I, thing, that is."

"But... but..." Great fat tears began to roll down Dolores' cheeks as she stared at him in disbelief. "But I thought... that you always wanted me... but I had to prove myself first. They always said that you liked the girls... and as Mummy said that I was the best, and the prettiest... well, it had to be didn't it? That you wanted me most, I was your favourite. But then I left school and waited for you to propose, but nothing happened, so I worked out that you wanted me to do a job first - before we got married, that is. So I went off and joined the Ministry to try to impress you... but they didn't give me a very good job, nothing impressive at all... so I worked hard, and waited and thought of you all the time. And it took longer than I would have thought, but finally I managed it, and got a job in the Ministry that was good enough. So tonight, I invited you here, knowing that we were finally going to be together - you the clever teacher, and me your favourite little girl of all..."

Horace was by this point completely flabbergasted. He tried to focus on the hysterical female beneath him, but his sentimental old thoughts kept slipping to favourites and times that had followed school days...

_Lily had owled him when she got her N.E.W.T. results - excited and triumphant, and asked whether he'd like to see her, to celebrate, and to thank him for all of his help. They had met for dinner the following night; never a lull in the conversation, never anything but sparkle in her beautiful green eyes, and when she suggested that they went dancing afterwards he could never have refused, swaying gently in place as she twirled about him, turning him, then kissing him..._

With a wrench of the mind, Horace formed some words. "Well, I'm truly sorry to have to tell you that isn't actually the case. I'm sure some other fine young wizard will appreciate you, though. There's a good girl." Dolores started sobbing in earnest at that, clutching on to his knees and soaking his expensive robes with tears and worse. "There, there, don't cry," Horace said stiffly. "Plenty more centaurs in the woods, and all that, dear. No need to worry about me, now is there?"

They stayed like that for a good few minutes, Dolores sobbing, and Horace rather awkwardly patting the top of her head in an effort to make her stop. Finally, with a great rattling breath, Dolores looked up, her face dark and blotchy. She swallowed hard, and then an expression of grim resolution crossed her features. "Professor?" she asked finally, with brittle, almost aggressive tone, "At least stay and share a cup of tea with me. To help overcome the rejection."

It wasn't really a question, but Horace was relieved that she seemed to calm down and he leapt upon the change of subject. "Yes, certainly. Do get up now, dear."

Dolores staggered to her feet and exited the room toward what Horace presumed was the kitchen. He really didn't want a repeat of the _cosy_ seating arrangement of before, so in her absence he crossed the room to a small, doiley-covered table, and took one of the seats to it's side.

Presently, Dolores returned bearing a floral tea-tray and assumed a position opposite him. "With milk and sugar, I presume, Professor?" she asked, clearly straining to keep herself in check.

"Yes, please." Horace took the proffered cup. "Thank you." He then determined that the sooner the tea was drunk, the sooner he would be free to leave, so took a deep gulp.

Across the table, Dolores almost seemed to smirk. "I hope it is to your taste, Professor? Do drink up."

"Erm, yes. Thank you." He took another sizable swig, finishing the dainty cupful and only just resisting the urge to dash for the door straight away.

As Horace's empty teacup was reunited with it's saucer, Dolores openly grinned. "Now..." She leaned toward him, her voice low and dangerous. "Tell me a secret."

"I'm in love with Lily Evans. And now it's too late." At that, Horace gasped in shock, quite aware that he had felt absolutely no desire to have uttered those words. Dolores' eyes opened very wide indeed.

"What? Who? That little whelp of a girl from Gryffindor?"

"Don't say that! She's a beautiful young woman, and she said we could have made it work, but I..." Horace was aware that he was blathering, out of control.

"And was she your lover?!" The woman opposite gaped as she asked.

"Yes!" _Oh no._ He really hadn't wanted to admit that; not to that awful, meddling female. That had to stay a secret - for all concerned. Something really wasn't right...

\- And then Horace realized. "My God, woman, you've drugged me!" He snatched the teacup from the table and eyed the dregs carefully - the slight bluish tinge of the tea in reaction with the potion gave the game away. He should have been more careful! He, a Potions' Master being caught out by lacings of Veritaserum!

Horace reached immediately into the inner pockets of his robes and produced a vial of antidote, uncorking it and swallowing it down in one go. He thanked his lucky stars he always carried such things with him, then stood up from the table in a great flurry of offence. "How dare you, woman?"

"How dare _I?_ " replied Dolores, incredulously, maniacally. "'How dare _you?_ ' I think is a more appropriate question, _Professor!_ How could you scorn the love of a beautiful pure-blood witch in favour of _her?_ That sad, genetic abnormality? I just, I just...." With that, she let out a keening screech and then collapsed onto the table in great shuddering sobs. Horace looked on, both appalled and transfixed. "...All my life I've lived in someone's shadow, always second-best, never good enough for anyone, never good enough for _you!_ " she spat. "You with your favours and your favourites and your bed filled with pretty little whores. Pretty little red-headed, ever-so-clever, Mudblood whores!" Horace felt the anger boiling within him as Dolores continued to shriek. "I hate her, I hate her, I hate her! I hate all Mudbloods! They should all be rounded-up and crucio-ed to death! I hate her and I'll hate her children, and her grandchildren and-"

"ENOUGH!" His shout echoed around the little room, causing the brittle glass ornaments on the mantelpiece to tinkle. The screeching woman before him was shocked into silence. They stared at each other for a long moment, red-faced, seething. Finally, Horace broke her gaze and turned toward the door to leave. "I'll hear no more of this."

Dolores however, seemed to make a miraculous recovery from her hysterics. Her hand flashed for her wand, locking and warding the outside door to bar his escape. She stood up, slowly, deliberately, her tears and pains seemingly quite forgotten in favour of a nightmarishly calm countenance. "Aren't you forgetting something, Professor?" she asked sweetly.

"Not at all," replied Horace, still fuming.

"Oh, but I think that you are, Professor _dear_." A delicate pause. "A lady spurned can be a dangerous quantity, after all. Her emotions are likely to be extremely fragile - and if, by pure chance - she just so happened to be in possession of a secret that could have damaging implications upon a man's career, upon his place in society... Well, it would be extraordinary how much a poor creature in that position might find that she - let's - slip." Dolores laughed girlishly, as if she had just described a very sweet kitten.

Horace gazed at her, aghast, and his mind quickly worked through the possibilities. The woman's new job made the threat of repercussions alarmingly real, and it wouldn't do to ignore it. In the worse case, he could be forced to leave his post, and - _oh no_ \- Lily would despise him. He could bear many things, but he couldn't bear that. Bitterly therefore, Horace gathered his Slytherin bargaining skill. "What would you have me do?" he asked stiffly.

"Oh, nothing awful, Professor, don't look so tense!" Dolores replied in a manner that might have meant to be coquettish, "I just want you to make me feel..." She came closer to him, then closer still until her mouth was almost upon his and the sticky heat of her breath fell upon his face "...Like one of your _favourites_."


End file.
